


boozy ice cream

by JD2357



Series: janurwby prompts 2021 [3]
Category: RWBY
Genre: Dreams and Nightmares, During Canon, Gen, Happy Ending, Heavy Drinking, Light Sadism, Missing Scene, Rain, Revenge, Self-Doubt, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, but also murdery cause it's neo, but only because of, it's neo but angsty, set leading into V6
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-13 18:35:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28533027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JD2357/pseuds/JD2357
Summary: In a bar in the shady underbelly of Mistral, where cobwebs hang like bunting and a spider lurks around every corner, a drunken cycle of faces catches some attention.#januRWBY Day 3: Favourite Villain - Neo fic.
Relationships: Neopolitan & Roman Torchwick
Series: janurwby prompts 2021 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2086476
Kudos: 5





	boozy ice cream

“So anyway, I was sayin' that there's no way the Council'd pick up on the plan with ol' Leo out o' th' pict... H-hey, the hell’s happened to that girl over there?”

“Uhh...probably some weird Semblance shit, I dunno. I’d stay away from her if I were you.”

The men bearing brands of spiders nodded morbidly to each other, silently agreeing that _whatever_ her deal was, it was best to keep a safe distance. Hell, get too close, and you might well end up sucked into it, like some form of ever-shifting quicksands pulling one’s feet into entrenchment. Downing the last of their beers, the two leave little but froth behind them, scattering Lien onto the counter before pushing their way out the door.

And, as the night progressed to something closer to morning, all the stools at the bar but one gradually emptied out, the low-pitched bustle that’s trademark of a tavern existing _primarily_ for gossip kept under one’s breath faded to a relative murmur, and then to hush beyond the squeaking of knit cloth against wet glass. 

The bartender, a young woman dressed in Lil’ Miss Malachite’s customary purple, with messy brown hair spiky enough to rise at the top yet loose enough to fall over one eye, would have a difficult job describing the one customer they still had left. (Well, she’d say ‘customer,’ but most signs would indicate she’d passed out hours ago.) The issue being that… Well, it wasn’t _one_ customer, exactly. Not in every sense of the word.

When she’d walked in, she’d been adorned with a tattered white coat, cut off halfway down like a crop top, with pink lining on the inside, along with ripped leggings which _really_ seemed more than a fashion statement and muddied white boots from the rain outside. Really, she’d have been easy to look over if it wasn’t for her sodden hair; tricoloured, chocolate brown one side and strawberry pink the other, with dashes of creamy white along the lighter of the two. All thoroughly plastered to her face. And it struck _everyone_ as bizarre for her to trudge out of the storm so comprehensively soaked...considering the beautiful umbrella she carried along with her.

But once the woman had finished a few drinks - with surprising tolerance for someone with the stature of a junior gymnast, if the bartender could be so frank - something odd had started. One half of her had remained as described; the other half had begun...cycling. For a few minutes, one side of her clothes had been replaced by a long white trenchcoat and a grey scarf, with her brown hair turning a soft orange in what became a quite sickly colour contrast. 

...It was really very uncanny to the bartender. It looked like a shoddy photo splice, only it was a real person right in front of her.

And it hadn’t stopped there. With each shower of pink fragments from her body, that side of the customer’s appearance changed anew. A black corset and a red cape with two-toned hair like dark wine; ashen locks flowing down a backless red dress; at one point, the mirror image of her other side, only with the patches and mud and ripped-open material patched up and pristine. 

Right now, she was back to the woman with the dress; apparently imbued with Dust, on closer inspection. It seemed obvious she was dreaming, by now, and that something of her Semblance must be manifesting whatever she’s been thinking about. But unfortunately for the little sleepyhead, it was closing-up time.

“Right, lil’ missy, it’s ‘bout time you toddle off home now.” A nudge on her shoulder, and--

-

In a hazy world of impossible images, unattainable hands and throats forever out of her blade’s reach, Neo twirled Hush with all the triumph of a parade baton, before flicking the blade out from its tip to scrape along the ground, showering sparks behind it all the while.  
And she had that smug bitch on the ground, Aura broken, real terror in her eyes which Neo could imagine so _vividly,_ even _if_ nothing the two of them could have done back then would have scared her. It didn’t matter how she’d beaten her - it’s a dream, it’s her imagination, the details were irrelevant.

“Please,” Cinder Fall whimpered in what Neo could only _guess_ was how that insufferable silken voice of hers would sound, were it to convey any emotion other than smarmy superiority.

“Please, I’m begging you, don’t kill me. I’m sorry for what happened to your boss, it was all my fault, please, please--”

A delirious grin spread on the mute’s features, conveying all the joy she couldn’t express with words, and she raised the blade high to fall--

_“...time you toddle off home now.”_

-

Acting off delayed instinct, Neo pushed from the bar and coiled her arm around the strange one she’d woken up to, kicking off her stool to try and swing around the bartender, throwing her to the ground with all the force of a suplex while she would land on her own two feet. And, well, she succeeded in the first part, dragging the brunette into the planks beneath them… But she was still fresh off enough sorrow-drowning to put a quake in an _Ursa’s_ step; landing, then, on anything but the floor was just as impossible as the dream she’d been roused from.

 **“Augh!** Oi, the hell’re you playin’ at?”

She blinked a few times, one eye the deep brown of her hair early in the evening, one like the embers of a fire, as she pushes herself off the floor to check who she’s toppled. ...Hm. Nobody that threatening, really. Oops~?

It was then that a jingling bell behind her preceded an opening door, and the criminal turned to meet the imposing figure of one Lil’ Miss, sternly flicking a fan closed at the sight before her. It’s only then that Neo realised, from the bemused eyes of the blonde matriarch, the condition she’d woken up in. With a quick click of her fingers, she snapped the side of her Cinder-fied by her Semblance back to normal, and Malachite quirked an eyebrow.

“...Hm. Cute trick." She looks past the customer to frown at her lackey. "Honey, why’re you rollin’ around on the floor with a girl I’d dream up if I hadn’t gotten my daily sundaes for a week? I know the place is near _empty,_ but--”

Even before a flustered retort from the lackey still nursing a shoulder after being flopped by a girl about half a foot shorter than her, Neo had made her thoughts on the comment known with a pointed roll of her eyes.

“Oh, shut it! I was just tellin’ her we were lockin’ up, an’ she dragged me down like she was lookin’ for a scrap, the psycho! Geez…” The bartender stood, dusting herself down, and palming a gun on her waist with a glare at the girl before her.

It was funny to Neo, that a little sidearm like that was supposed to intimidate her. But aside from tilting her head with a cocksure smirk, she resisted the urge to _do_ anything beyond staying very still. ...Partially because she wasn’t _entirely_ sure where any given part of the bartender _was;_ a natural consequence of the booze providing a duplicate of the brunette for each of her own coloured eyes.

The blonde’s voice came again from behind, a curious lilt to its peaks. “...Hey, Scoops, do that thing again. Like you were a minute ago, when I walked in.”

‘Scoops’ glared more than a little at the nickname, but complied if only to make the point that she _could_ do ‘her trick’ deliberately. Eager to keep from the pseudo-body-horror she’d shown them earlier, Neo’s entire frame disappeared, scrolled into intangible dust and glass, reforming in the whole shape of the Fall Maiden; a fact unbeknownst to her, of course… Nor did Neo know who’d walked into this very building a few days before.

The one-lipped grin her efforts quickly earned from Lil’ Miss set off alarm bells for the little acrobat; she staggered to her feet, scraping bare skin through torn tights against the sting of spruce wood, and unfurling Hush to guard herself as she slinked sloppily toward the window, in case she'd need to escape.

“...I told ya we’d get double the business outta that haughty madam," the smirking lady of spiders muses aloud. "Listen here, Scoops - we ain’t gonna do you no harm, alright? I jus’ wanna ask - that girl, the one with the amber eyes. Her name’s _Cinder,_ ain’t it?”

"..."

The colour of Neo’s eyes went white for a moment, but she nodded cautiously.

“An’ whaddya want from ‘er?”

The sound of a blade being pushed out from the umbrella came after a moment of tense silence, and Lil’ Miss and the bartender took a step back, considering if they’d misread everything about this scenario… 

Until Neo brought the point of the blade to within inches of her own throat, and slashed across. If that hadn’t made it obvious, then surely the blood red shade both her eyes had taken, and their murderous glare, certainly did.

The two spiders glanced at each other then, and exchanged a wordless smirk. “...Would you be willin’ to pay for that?”

-

Come the next evening and the next few after, Neo walked the slimy streets of Mistral, snatching purses in the rain and poaching pawn shops of their pinched profits, paying the way to her prize. And when that promised day came, she twirled the hat she’d kept safe all this time, and with a shaking breath, put it on at last.

They were back in business, after all; this was the day she’d teach Fall what it’s like, going back to nothing. She could let herself wear it now.

A shower of pink, and she hid every scuff, every patch torn by the Grimm across Anima, every cut from Mistralian knives, every bruise on her body and both shadows under her eyes.

She’d watch Cinder Fall crawl, that’s for sure. And she wouldn’t let her know how _she’d_ had to crawl to reach this moment until that was clear.

  
Keeping her guiding torch’s feathered hat from her illusion, Neopolitan and a spare self to be shattered opened out their umbrellas for the day’s rain, and set about skipping along the stones to her sweetest revenge.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading if you're down here! I always appreciate it so much.
> 
> This was for #janurwby day 3, prompt 'favourite villain,' and honestly, Neo's not *quite* my #1 *fave,* but I'd already done a Cinder story last month and I was struggling to come up with an idea that captured me for Ironwood or Mercury, so this felt a neat side-choice.
> 
> neo hiding how bedraggled she was until near the end of the cinder fight was such a good detail and it gave me brainworms about exploring a little touch of the angst she probably developed over two volumes of having no clear goal to pursue, hence, binge drinking ice cream gal 
> 
> ...are ya backstabbin' cinder soon, son?


End file.
